


Pea Green Boat

by pauraque



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animals, Gen, POV Nonhuman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-19
Updated: 2009-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pauraque/pseuds/pauraque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The owl and the pussycat went to sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pea Green Boat

**Author's Note:**

> The first draft of this was written around when Order of the Phoenix came out, so it does not acknowledge any canon beyond that. Hannelore helped.

Norris is climbing up through broken stones, trying to find where the air is. Her head hurts. There is a whiff of light — just a little crack — and she pulls herself toward it. It is too small and when she puts her head there it touches her whiskers painfully, but it is the only way out. She claws and squeezes her way through, and pops out into the open, and she is outside, on grass. Dizzy and aching.

It is day; the sky is dull, but it isn't cloudy, and it looks wrong. This is the courtyard of her home, but it is more quiet than it should be. There are no voices. Not only human voices, but none of birds, none of mice and voles, none of insects.

She walks carefully away from what should be the Inside, but is now a pile of stones. She goes to the other end of the courtyard, stopping often to lick at her paws, which are scraped now. She casts about for the scent of her companion, but all she can smell is meat and dead fire.

She doesn't know what happened. Her companion was holding her against his chest, she remembers, and there was roaring and shaking and bright light; her eyes contracted so hard that she could see only shadows. Then it smelt bitter-shock like a bird's neck snapping, and her companion was gone.

There is dirt and blood on Norris's fur, so when she gets far enough away, she sits under a silent tree with her tail curled around and begins to wash, her heart pattering fast like rain.

*

It is night when the owl comes.

She circles above for a long time, as if confused. Norris watches her carefully; she is the first other thing alive Norris has seen. The owls always come and go; this one must have been gone when the things happened.

The owl floats down silent and white against the sky, and alights on a part of the broken courtyard wall. The wind ruffles her feathers; she rocks from one foot to the other, glancing about with round bright eyes.

The owl has that tingling Scent about her, that porous golden tingle that the children had, screeching and pounding shoes down the corridors, that which all humans had except Norris's companion. The little creatures that scurried and were for food did not have it. Norris's mother and her sisters didn't either, though that was so long ago she doesn't remember it much. Her companion understood that smell too, and it made his heart quicken and his skin tense. It was always so restful to sit with her companion in their room, and not smell anything strange.

The owl begins to cry — this is the place she was meant to go, and it is gone. Norris crouches down among the roots of the black tree, and the owl's weeping calls shiver along her spine.

*

In the morning the owl has gone away again.

Norris does not know what to do. There is nothing alive here, nothing to eat. She has never been anywhere but here — home — and is afraid to leave. She has tried to go back into the rubble of the buildings, but there the tingle of wrongness becomes a crackling painful smell that makes her fur stand up and her ears ring.

She rolls on her back against the bare ground, scratching an itch.

It is like when she missed some time years ago, and when she woke up, she felt so stiff, and her reflection in her water made her cry. She would run for her companion then — he didn't understand what the matter was, but his hands were so soothing on her body.

She purrs thinking of his hands, joy welling up in her chest. His hard dry hands stroking over her back, the sweetness of his skin when he awakened in the morning, when she pressed against him...

She remembers that her companion is still now. His hands no longer move.

Wings flicker in the corner of her vision; she turns. It is the owl again, making a silent landing on the other end of the courtyard. She is not like the little birds that are for one to eat. Those ones are noisy and bustling, arguing with each other in the trees, though they are not here now.

She hops a bit and then stops. She has a chipmunk dead in her beak.

Norris is very hungry.

The owl approaches her cautiously. Her eyes look straight ahead like a cat or a human. Not like little birds, who look at things with one eye at a time.

Norris sits still, drawing her paws close in against herself. There is a breeze, and she can smell the good fresh food. A small word of need escapes her throat unbidden.

The wind blows Hedwig's feathers as she hops closer and drops it, and then moves away, watching.

Norris wants to reject this, or at least wait until the owl is gone, but she is too hungry. She tears the food's fur away and finds it bloody and delicious inside. She finishes it quickly, leaving small and cracked bones.

When she is done, the owl is still watching her. Now that she is no longer hungry, Norris is embarrassed; she puts on a disdainful eye and walks off stiff-legged to sleep by the ruined stone wall.

Hedwig watches her, and then flaps up into a tree.

As days pass, Hedwig continues to bring these offensive offerings; Norris thinks that to serve is all she knows.

It begins not to seem strange to have the owl with her.

*

It is dawn, and for the first time the dusty clouds have parted enough for the sun to reach the ground, making a light patch past the tree, by the wall. Her stomach full, Norris stretches out in the warm. There is short new grass here; it feels good against her body.

Hedwig has not left yet, though Norris is pretending to ignore her, seeing her out of the corner of one eye.

The owl falls from her branch and floats down lightly to the ground. She hops cautiously a few steps forward, stretching her neck to peer at Norris. She moves into the light, which gleams strangely in her feathers like the glitter of part-melting snow. She extends one broad wing at a time, tasting this foreign heat. They watch each other.

Another step is too close, it touches Norris's space. Her tail flickers; she turns away and closes her eyes.

Hedwig retreats. Her taking off is nearly noiseless, but Norris knows when she is gone.

She knows she will come back.

*

It is evening when Norris approaches Hedwig where she is sitting on the stone wall. The owl's round, heavy-lidded eyes are open in surprise as Norris lies down carefully beside her, tucking her paws beneath herself.

The beak that grooms stiff feathers is too sharp for thin fur — Norris yelps in warning anger, her claws coming out a bit.

Hedwig puffs up a little, taken aback. But they settle back down together after a moment, feathers smoothing, claws retracting.

The owl tries again, more careful this time. She strokes Norris's fur with the blunt part of her beak, and then with her face, as a cat does.

Norris finds she wants to wash the owl, but when her tongue touches feathers, it is confusion, the reddish under-thought that this should be food. She rubs her face on Hedwig's shoulder instead, pretending that this is what she meant to do all along.

Hedwig's heartbeat is slower than a human's. Her feathers are deep and soft-edged, and Norris finds when she presses against the bird that she is lean and delicate-boned.

Norris begins to purr.


End file.
